Gray Wolves

Federal wildlife officials have rejected a petition from advocates who sought to reclassify gray wolves as a threatened species in most of the U.S. Gray wolves across most of the Lower 48 are classified as endangered, which is more protective than a threatened designation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state of Minnesota have agreed on a plan to provide $220,000 to control gray wolves that prey on livestock. The announcement came Wednesday from U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson. The Minnesota Democrat calls it welcome news for farmers and ranchers who haven’t been allowed to shoot or trap wolves that threaten their livestock since a federal judge in December put wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan back on the endangered list.

Two gray wolves recently traversed the frozen Lake Superior surface from Canada to Isle Royale National Park, scientists said Tuesday, but the animals stayed only five days — dashing hopes that ice bridges would induce migrants from the mainland to replenish the island’s lagging wolf population.

Gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region are protected by federal law once more. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is publishing a rule Friday designating wolves in Michigan and Wisconsin as “endangered” and those in Minnesota as “threatened.”

Gray wolves in Wyoming and three Great Lakes states would lose court-ordered protection under legislation proposed in Congress, the latest offensive in a 12-year battle over whether the predator species is secure enough to allow hunting and trapping or should retain its federal shield.

A group of wolf experts disputes that gray wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan are endangered or that a judge’s ruling will help the population spread to other states. A federal judge in Washington on Friday threw out the Obama administration’s decision to remove gray wolves in the three states from the endangered list, a move that bans wolf hunting and trapping in the region.

A proposal to lift federal protections for gray wolves across most of the U.S. suffered a significant setback Friday as an independent review panel said the government is relying on unsettled science to make its case. Federal wildlife officials want to remove the animals from the endangered species list across the Lower 48 states, except for a small population in the Southwest. The five-member U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service peer review panel was tasked with reviewing the government’s claim that the Northeast and Midwest were home to a separate species, the eastern wolf.

Federal wildlife officials have drafted plans to lift protections for gray wolves across the Lower 48 states, which would end a decades-long effort that has restored the animals but only in parts of their historic range.

Wisconsin’s first organized wolf hunt has started with no kills reported. The Humane Society of the United States and The Fund for Animals have filed notice that they plan to sue to get the animal back on the endangered species list in the Great Lakes region.

After devoting four decades and tens of millions of dollars to saving the gray wolf, the federal government wants to get out of the wolf-protection business, leaving it to individual states — and the wolves themselves — to determine the future of the legendary predator.